Photon Cloud questions about how to use

anubhab123

Hello everyone

I downloaded Photon Unity-Networking Asset after installing Unity. I found some documentation on Photon Cloud however i'm a bit confused. Is Photon Cloud only usable with Unity? I guess I was under the impression that that you could use any Photon Client SDK to connect to Photon Cloud without using Unity at all.

Here are a few questions I had about Client-Server Model for Photon Cloud:

Can you have any control over what the server does with Photon Cloud in terms of your own server-logic?
if not then where would the "game" take place if there were a bunch of clients connecting to Photon Cloud? Based on the previous answer How would the "game" state be synchronized across all Clients?(I am guessing by passing back information between the servers on Photon Cloud and the clients)

I'm a bit new to how Client-Server model works and the details of it however the reason I decided to go Client-Server for my game was because I wanted a central point of synchronization and also a database so I could update the data periodically and also at the same time have users submit data.

I decided to use Photon Cloud for the mobile application I am making however in the Photon Cloud documentation it says that there would be no server-side logic for my application but instead the clients would need to be made authoritative. I was planning on using the server to synchronize the clients game state but since I can't have my own server-side logic does this mean the clients synchronize with each other? Or perhaps one client acts as the synchronization point for the other clients(is the client called a "host" in this case?)?

I apologize if I don't make too much sense I'm really new to anything to do with networking.

Thank you so much!

Tobias

Our Photon Cloud Service is not the only way to make use of our Unity library. You can download our Photon Server SDK and host your own servers as well.
Make sure to download the Photon 3 SDK. In it, the "Loadbalancing" server logic is compatible with the Photon Unity Network package.
This will help run the server: http://doc.exitgames.com/v3/quickstart/ ... iveminutes

Can you have any control over what the server does with Photon Cloud in terms of your own server-logic?

Not in the cloud, no. At least not yet.

How would the "game" state be synchronized across all Clients?

You get a bunch of players in a "room" and there you send events. The Photon Unity Networking package makes this look like Unity's networking solution.

Or perhaps one client acts as the synchronization point for the other clients(is the client called a "host" in this case?)?

This is another way you can do it. While using the cloud, you only have the "room" and "event" logic to sync data. You can't store anything (yet) and you can't check the validity of what your clients send (this would require some knowledge of game logic). In Photon Unity Networking, we make one user the "MasterClient" and this can be used to take care of what's going on (start rounds, etc).

anubhab123

Thank you so much for your response Tobias! I have a few more questions if you don't mind.

I was wondering what would happen if a client or Master Client got disconnected would the room get destroyed or would it be kept alive. I assume I can use the Photon cloud servers to host the game or instead use a MasterClient if I want.

I was planning on using Photon Cloud Service through Photon Client SDK for iOS. Do I need to build my application through Unity to use Photon Cloud or can I not use Unity? Are there functions or methods I can call to make it access Photon Cloud Service as opposed to using my own server. I know I need to use my Photon Cloud App ID in the function call or method in iOS.

For the documentation for photon client sdk and server Sdk is there a place where I can see the methods and functions available and brief description for each of them? I know I could just download the client and server sdk and go through the methods but it seems like it would be more convenient to see it online.

Thank you so much Tobias!

Kaiserludi

Hi. I just have answered the Photon Cloud with iOS question here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1085

Tobias

About the documentation: We don't have the reference documentation online. Each SDK has it's own reference included (some in PDF, some in CHM). This way, you only get the documentation that matters in your case.
The online documentation is for general topics, aside from the pure API: http://doc.exitgames.com

belledune

I'm new to cloud so I really don't know much about it. Can you explain how it works?

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